Photos from one guy's travels around the world -- from UNESCO World Heritage Sites to national parks to his own backyard in Texas, and lots of places in between.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Wyoming Wildlife, Part I

There's really nothing I enjoy more when out in the wilderness than seeing wildlife. Scenery, flowers and the like are all fine. But the serendipity of stumbling upon an animal in its natural habitat takes the cake. We saw this bull moose before we even got into the parks. Or rather, we saw all the cars stopped first and pulled over ourselves to see what the fuss was about.

One of our guides told us that male bison sometimes roll around in their own urine to try and intimidate other males. I wonder how much stuff they just make up to see what the tourists will fall for.

Having a little breakfast.

This bison calf seemed very intrigued by the unusual substance we call asphalt.

Another bison calf. Apparently the redder the coat, the younger the calf.

The golden-mantled ground squirrels seemed to have an unfortunate sense that humans were walking vending machines. We didn't feed any of the little beggars.

I really have no idea what he was digging for. I'm not sure he did, either.

I took about a dozen shots of this pronghorn buck that all came out exactly the same. "Unperturbed" was an apt way to describe his reaction to our presence.

This mule deer helped demonstrate the origin of the expression "deer in the headlights." I get it now.

Not much of a photo, but this is the closest we got to a bear on our trip. We had to take our pictures frantically from our moving vehicle because there was nowhere to pull over. A ranger calmly kept tourists at a safe distance and traffic on the road moving. The black bear couldn't have cared less.